Demon Host
by land of a thousand words
Summary: "They will all have lived tragic lives; the details, they say, unimportant. These are dark times, and there's no time for reflection when there are corpses to be made – or better yet, burned." (Vampire-Hunter AU!)
1. Chapter 1

Notes: _This is my 7th and final foray into the Sons of Anarchy fandom that I've already posted on Ao3. Originally posted 12/11/2013._

This strange brain-child was inspired by user **flokism**, on Tumblr; fueling my love for emotionally repressed bikers and God-complex infused monster-hunters, plus VAMPIRES, obviously. And of course, because I couldn't help myself, Tara and Chibs will appear (together, possibly naked).

I also ended up creating a small mix for this story on 8tracks: /alanabeans/demon-host

* * *

Pt. 1

"And I know there's no such thing as ghosts / but I have seen the **demon host**." – Timber Timbre

_Do not look for my heart any more; the beasts have eaten it._ – Charles Baudelaire, "Flowers of Evil"

A young, foolhardy Jackson Teller sat restless on the edge of his father's knees, fists clenched, body primed for a fight, brimming with the enthusiasm that only childish adrenaline can muster. A tiny t-shirt with a Harley Davidson logo emblazoned on the front, a small splattering of tomato sauce, dabbed away hurriedly over the "H;" his child-friendly uniform, worn only briefly before the ruggedly sewn, patchwork-map of his leather cut; draped over broader shoulders.

"…and one day you'll ride with us," John Teller finished quietly, his free hand fiddling with a pencil over the unfinished pages of a soft-skinned diary, good for bending and twisting; full of their history, his children's legacy.

"When you're ready."

Jackson's soft, chubby hand fell flat against the quick, messy sketch in his father's journal, hastily scribbled in the upper right-hand corner of the page, the brownish hues of a coffee stain circling the pointed fangs, the manic eyes. Being young and inexperienced he lacked the necessary fear, and JT watched his son with trepidation, yet determined to appreciate these moments of carefree joy between a father and son. But it was to be short-lived, a small reprieve before the next tragedy, the murder of his youngest son, the betrayal perpetrated by his wife and brother, Clay Morrow.

"They're not so scary," Jackson whispered, tracing the words with his fingers.

Thunder rumbled loudly, the windows rattling noisily in their panes. The young boy twisted in fear, the journal falling to the floor with an abrupt echo that rang ominously in the ensuing silence. Jackson turned his head round quickly, widened eyes staring pleadingly at his father, seemingly begging for forgiveness.

John smiled, mussing his son's already-wild blonde hair affectionately, reassuringly, "You have nothing to fear from me, kid."

A hesitant smile grew between his chubby, reddened cheeks, and he scrambled from his father's lap, lifting the book from the ground to return it to its rightful owner.

"Thank you," he said, taking the journal into his rough, calloused hands, smoothing his palm over its cover. His son nodded proudly before turning tail and running elsewhere, maybe to find Gemma, or play at outlaw again, carving stakes out of thin branches in the yard, hissing and snapping at the dog as if he were one of _them_; John's worst nightmare come to life.

The storm continued outside, a heavy rain falling brutal and noisy against the dry earth. His fingers crept warily within the pages of his journal, the spine cracking as he re-opened to the page with his sketch, a poorly drawn representation, inked to paper if only to release the image from the cob-webbed caverns of his head; his son, small and weak, within the grip of its powerful jaws.

* * *

When he was sixteen years old he would meet Tara Knowles, a quiet, determined girl, with an absent father and a negligent mother. "Wise beyond her years," was the apt expression, often heard between teachers in the hallways at school, or between nosy mothers at the supermarket. Awkward in her skin, but confident in her mind; like most teenagers, completely assured of her own rightness, and the utter incompetency of adults.

So when she met Jackson Teller – loud, self-assuredly handsome, and boisterous; there was no doubt in her mind that he was the be-all, end-all of her romantic life. The King to her Queen, and they would rule, as confidently as they prowled the streets of Charming in their youth, the town, the state, hell, the entire US if given the opportunity. She would grow into her body soon enough, the almost detached feeling of her soul, beginning to cling to the swell of her breasts and the traitorous new curves of her hips. And in this way she would learn about power; about the sway of her own femininity, and the bloody truth hidden right beneath the surface.

They'd been seeing each other for almost a year before she would discover, thrown from the back of his bike, tossed like a rag-doll into the woods; the heavy, wet breath against the side of her neck, the smell of iron in her nostrils and she would learn – in pain and in blood, the lessons that his father had learned, his brothers. But she had already been confirmed, a baptism more innate than Jackson Teller's first kill, a different kind of blood rushed through her veins, and that instinctual fear – like the first humans, scared of the dark without knowing why – pulsed only slightly, tantalizingly, as if to whisper, _You only have to run if you want to._

The beast had been pulled from her before he could sink his teeth into her flesh; Jax's elongated fingers gripping the back of its shirt, his eyes mad with the thrill of an unexpected kill.

"Wait," she had gruffly whispered, clearing her throat, absent mindedly rubbing away the feeling of its breath against her neck.

Jax held the monster at bay, its jaws snapping, a viscous drool dripping from between its lips. A slow, sensual smile appeared on his face, and the stake that had been poised above the creature's heart he suddenly lowered, his forearm extending, and the pointed edge of the wood angled in her direction; as if as an offering to the woman he loved.

"Right in the heart," he directed casually, "don't miss."

* * *

It would go on that way for years; hunting, riding, drinking... fucking. Right up until she turned nineteen she had been living on a never-ending rush of adrenaline – constantly toeing the line between life and death. Until one day she felt herself off-balance, her weight shifting oh so subtly into life, a few extra cells, a few days late. She had prayed, had actually walked into a church and thrown herself in between empty pews, hands clasped, pressed so tightly into the skin of her forehead it would leave a mark, "Please God," she whispered, begging, "I can't have a baby."

She muttered into the wood of the pews, the muggy, scent-filled air, but she felt like it had been shouted, echoing through the empty aisles in the wake of her confession. "Baby," as if her prayers had been amplified in the tall, curved ceilings of the chapel. She felt the small, silver cross resting heavy and warm between her breasts; up until now a means of protection only, just another weapon in the fight against the undead. She gripped it tightly within her fist, nearly breaking the clasp at the back of her neck.

_God,_ she thought again, _what have we done?_

* * *

Belfast, Ireland (1997-1998)

Despite having served only a short time as a medic with the British Army, Filip Telford had seen and heard all kinds of strange things. As with most war-minded stories, they had an air of the fantastic about them; an element of the unknown, hovering between the letters of the words in his friends' stories. Wild, otherworldly tales that he had been hearing all his life; so long, in fact, that a small part of him had always gotten the sense that they were_real_. Certainly, he had grown up, known that those stories were just stories, but the fact remained; sitting around a fire, drunk on whiskey, listening to the fanciful tales of his comrades, he could feel it – the fine hairs on the back of his neck, standing on end.

Soon enough the illusory fairy tale would reach its grim end. An internal, bloody rash of murders within his unit; strange neck wounds, bodies completely drained of blood. There had been an unsettling feeling in the air during those few weeks, as if there were a lion waiting in the brush, preparing to strike. A smell of death permeated the air, and even the oft-suffocating smell of a dozen or so chain-smoking men couldn't overpower its pungency.

In later years he would say that it had been the child in him who had saved his life. It was the inability to let go, to believe his mother's stories long into adulthood despite all this science, all the logical reasoning he had come to know. It was why he had been so prepared, his body tense, ready to strike; the lighter resting heavily in the pocket of his jacket, as if it were a loaded gun.

It had leapt out at him from the shadows (as they are wont to do), inky-black eyes, fangs extended; a heavy, hiss-like breathing, like a large snake trying to coil itself around him. He had been faster than it expected, the glass bottle of dark liquor thrown hard against its temple, a flame ignited, the lighter thrown – it had burst into flames, like a bottle rocket, screeching, limbs twisting and contorting in inhuman shapes until it fell silent, a burnt corpse, lying in a puddle of piss and whiskey.

He'd joined SAMBEL shortly after that, hearing drunken whispers at the backs of pubs; a motorcycle gang that weren't like any "gang" they'd ever seen. Very hush-hush concerning their business practices, would only deal with the "right" sort, freakishly good fighting skills, strong enough to knock-out any drunken Irishman ten-times over; and with an air of death about them, as if they were reapers themselves.

"Tha' was wha' got me the most," the older man had whispered, slurring his words. "Was like someone had walked o'r my grave."

In his year or so riding with the men of SAMBEL, Filip had lived a fuller life than in all his years growing up. His eyes opened to a dark underbelly that he'd just _known_ had always been there. A brotherhood he'd always craved, and a wife and daughter he would have gone to the ends of the Earth to protect.

He was to awaken one night, uncomfortably wet and sticky, like he had fallen in mud. There was a familiar scent in the air, but breaching the surface of sleep he would have a hard time placing it. Reaching for his wife, he opened his eyes, her own staring, wide and un-blinking back into his own.

It would all be a blur after that (_"Tell me," she would whisper into his ear, eyes reflecting pools, "what do you remember?" "Nothing," he would reply, lips thin, "I remember nothing."_), a panicked scrambling from the bed he and his wife had so recently shared, feet and hands sliding against the floor and walls, what could only barely be defined as running for his daughter's room, his chest tight, a brief, naive thought at the back of his mind, _Heart attack?_

She had never looked so vulnerable, for in the very second that she had been born there had been life, a screaming cry that shouted, "I am here! I am alive!" Now she was only a silent, bloodied bundle, carelessly left on the floor of her nursery, the shaggy white rug a mocking pink. In his hasty, blinded panic he had been careless; defenseless and weak he thought not to look for the intruder. Flung towards the wall of the bedroom, the framed pictures crashing to the floor, he felt the sharp edge of a knife, slicing through his cheeks as if his flesh were warm butter.

"You and your friends better back the _fuck_ off," the voice hissed, spitting into his ear.

"This is only the beginning."

* * *

Charming, CA (1998)

On the blistering hot, August day she had decided to leave Charming, Jax, and the Sons of Anarchy – she would meet him for the first time. The youngest she would ever know him, and only for a moment. A pack slung over his weary shoulders, stained gauze haphazardly taped over either side of his face.

She had wanted to stop at the garage just one more time, to say goodbye to her family, even if they didn't necessarily _know_ it was goodbye. Jax and Clay were gone for the weekend on some trip up North; a nest, presumably, a tip from Wayne Unser. It had been her perfect opportunity to escape. And to think, she'd been restless, nervous about her visit; an empty bus waiting for her at the depot, with a ticket burning a hole in her pocket. But then she'd seen him, sitting alone, a dazed look in his eyes, and that hurry to depart had been replaced with a sudden curiosity strong enough to keep her from bolting – if only for a moment.

A brief, introductory exchange and then there had been only silence; a strange, full silence, unlike any she had ever known. She could feel the weight of each of their secrets in their perfunctory "hellos," and in the sounds of their names. But neither relented, only silently observing the other, a trained look in their eyes and stances.

The medical tape which had only barely kept the gauze clinging to his skin had begun to peel in the heat of the day and she stepped forward, hesitating briefly before saying, "Would you mind if I…?" her eyes shifting meaningfully towards the cuts on his face.

As he would later learn, in her usual way, she had just barely waited for his reply, her smooth, warm hands coming up towards his face, flattening the bandages against the skin and he winced in pain and surprise, suddenly realizing that he had left Ireland wondering if he would ever feel a soft touch again.

"Sorry," she whispered, hands returning to each other, fidgeting, and her previous desire to flee returned in an overwhelming burst of adrenaline, her hands shaking. She tried to smile but only grimaced slightly before running quickly past him towards the garage, a vague scent of pine following in her stead. He watched her go, her legs moving quickly but assuredly, with a strength that seemed to rest at the base of her spine.

In her absence he thought of her only briefly, as if she'd been a figment – a ghost or an illusion that had seen fit to grant him a moments distraction from the nightmarish visions he couldn't seem to clear. He had only just begun to think of her; her face a mere blip in his mind, before a man named "Tig" had arrived before him, all smiles and hair, reaching for his pack; extending a friendly, firm hand to SAMCRO's newest brother.


	2. Chapter 2

Pt. 2

Charming, CA (2008)

Years would pass in the lines of their faces, the stray grey hairs, beginnings and endings of relationships, and of course, in funeral after funeral. In each hug of condolence, and sloppy spills of whiskey as it flowed wildly over the rims of rows of dirty glasses, time moved ever forward.

The Sons of Anarchy had continued operations in much the same way they always had: riding, hunting, drinking; the usual fare. Although the various losses of their brothers and their families had taken a toll on each of them, it did nothing to curb their vivacity for the life they had chosen. Chibs had heard many a drunken conversation during his time in Charming, and most (if not all) of these conversations tended towards the very idea of "choice—" and many of them (foolishly, he thought), believed that they had had no other choice when it had been each and every one of their turns to choose; when Juice had stumbled down the wrong alley one night in Queens; when Tig's daughter had been kidnapped, tortured, and thrown into a pit of fire.

"It wasn't even a choice," he would mumble, so late in the night it was nearly morning.

"How could I do anything else? When I'd seen what they did to her?"

And even though they had all heard the same stories hundreds of times, each of them would, without fail, receive that familiar pat on the back, or a shout for another drink for their sad, _sad_, brother in arms.

He'd become closest with Jax, a boy 16 years his junior, but still, there was a familiarity there he was drawn to. Clay, it would seem, had already filled the role of absent father, he had more than enough brothers to fill the empty space where his younger brother, Thomas, _should_ have been, and they filled the loyal, rowdy requirement true enough. But when it really counted, when there was a nest a couple of miles out of town and there were only 3 guys, Jax included, all adrenaline and testosterone, a couple drinks already in their systems, bikes rumbling smart, _cheeky_, beneath their respective asses. It was when _his_ voice became irreplaceable.

"Why not wait, Jackie boy?" he would say, arm slung around his shoulders, _all in good fun_.

"Everyone else'll be back tomorrow, maybe the day after, we'll go then – and in the meantime," he would continue, assuredly, at the look of apprehension on Jax's face, "I hear there's a fight in town tonight, and I got good odds on _you_, lad."

He would only feel bad, _occasionally_, exploiting Jackson's weak spot for some kind of parental approval. It was a bit like fighting dirty, but it had to be done, lest these walking cocks get them all killed.

* * *

Chicago, IL (2008)

There just hadn't been a way to _know_, he'd been too clever, too _human_. A monster with a familiar face, with lips and hands and smells that she had always known before; "I mean… you use my grandfather's cologne, for _fuck's sake_."

He had only laughed and gone for the pale skin of her throat, but despite her shock she was still quick, and the silver cross dangled from in between her clenched, reddening fingers. He had hissed and spit, sounding more like a snake than the man she had gone on only a few dates with, but there was a lingering madness behind his eyes – and it was more than the usual bloodlust craziness.

"_Stay away from me, Kohn_," her words slow and meaningful, a near hissing herself, her own fierce, animal-nature slipping through the loose threads of her scrubs.

There was a lot of placating on his part, "You don't really mean that," "We love each other," varied and pathetic attempts at getting her on board with the vampire-train; as if she would even for a moment consider continually shacking up with a guy who would drain her dry in seconds, or worse, turn her into _one of them_.

She escaped his grasping, near-transparent fingers without incident, as she would have years ago, and she was surprised at how quick her hunter-reflexes resurfaced, as if they hadn't been only recently slumbering, quiet and placid for years.

She had returned home that night, shaken, but alive, her mind filled with the uninvited memories of a time she had spent the last few years trying to forget; a life that she _could have_ had, but one that she had ultimately decided against.

And in the soft light of the lamp atop the night stand beside her bed, frequently extinguished, she in the habit of sleeping in only the darkest of rooms; found herself tossing, wired and concerned with the look of madness in Kohn's eyes, as if he really _were_ in love with her. Her windowpanes nearly rattled with the distant, vibratory sounds of motorcycle engines rumbling in the distance, and the weight of the crucifix rested heavy and warm above her tired heart.

* * *

Charming, CA (2008) / 1 Mo. Later

It was turning out to be one of the worst storms in recent years: debilitating, hurricane-like winds, and raindrops the size of bullets, heavy and cold, fell hard against a frequently thirsty city. The hospital was the busiest it had been since Tara arrived back in Charming, and while in normal circumstances her place would be in the maternity ward, the lack of staff, coupled with the multitude of natural disasters had been keeping her busy in the pit —

…Which was where she _happened_ to be when _he_ showed up, a large presence, yet quiet, she found him waiting patiently at the end of an empty bed, his wet boots planted firmly against the muddy tile. In her quick perusal she took note of the general wetness about him, the darker than usual denim (frayed at the knees), a slick, well-worn black leather jacket, adorned with the patches she herself had sewn onto the arms and breasts of others (before her sudden departure). When she reached his face she had to stifle a small gasp, a brief hiccup in her composure; as the deep scars embedded in the cheeks of his face brought that vivid, hot day in August rushing back, brutal and almost violent in its intensity, pulsing uncomfortably at the base of her skull.

When her eyes reached his, she felt herself unwillingly look away, berating herself in the process.

_You're a doctor_, she thought commandingly, gripping the plastic of her clipboard, _be a doctor_.

It was funny, however, that before she could even open her mouth to speak, there was a gruff brogue instead, an inherently joyful voice, despite the gravelly, exhausted quality it exuded.  
"I remember you."

His right lid blinked in a semblance of a wink, not quite but near enough, and she softly exhaled with relief, only suddenly realizing that she had been struck with a fierce anxiety since the moment she'd seen his boots, unmistakable in their shape, color, and antiquity; a surefire tell as to the kind of wheels that had brought him there.

"And I you," she responded quietly, allowing a small smile.

She felt the bump of a cart against her side, rushing quickly behind her, and all at once the noises of the hospital came rushing back, as if they had been muted this whole time, and it had just been her and this strange man, who she had only known for the briefest of moments, and who she hadn't given one thought to in the years since.

"So, what's brought you in tonight… Filip?" Uncertain in her tone, not quite sure if she's remembering his lips wrapped around the name in such the same way.

"That's right, but Chibs'll do just fine," he answered with a smile, "and I got into it with a few of 'em, looks like I'll need some stitches and antibiotics if you 'ave any on hand?"

She glanced down towards his stomach when he started to slowly roll his soiled shirt upwards, revealing a thick rivulet of dark blood, flowing steadily from a deep wound in his side. She kept any and all proclamations of the "Good Lord! Doesn't that hurt?" variety to herself; she knew these men, and this puncture wound wasn't the worst this man (_Chibs_) had seen, not by a long shot.

She had him stitched and a script for antibiotics written in no time at all, and despite the large numbers of people waiting to be seen, she was finding it difficult to pry herself away. She wanted to ask about Jackson, maybe Gemma, find out who was still alive, but a part of her felt as if she hadn't the right to inquire, leaving the way she did; her small, _so small_, secret, sleeping in the unstable caverns of her insides, quiet and ultimately abandoned.

"Does Jackie know you're here?"

He was sipping from a small paper cup; secretly wishing it were whiskey instead of water, even though he knew it was better to remain hydrated after that shot to the gut. He had noticed her expression over the rim of damp, softening white, and saw questions there, a desire to know but a sudden inability to speak.

"No," she answered, shaking her head as if awakening from a daydream, "I didn't think he'd want to see me."

Before he could answer another doctor appeared at her side, informing her that they were in fact _still busy_, all evidence to the contrary, and that unless her patient was bleeding out, she was to discharge him and free up another bed.

"Yes, of course," she said quickly, slapping a placating smile on her face.

She went to politely (almost timidly), ask him to leave, but he only raised a hand, interrupting: "Say no more. I'll get out of your hair." He stood up slowly, wincing only briefly before placing a friendly, warm hand on her shoulder, "And you should stop by the clubhouse some time," smiling, "I think Jackie'd be happy to see ya."

There was a crying, hiccupping young girl seated in front of her before she had even looked towards the exit to watch him leave, any evidence that he had been there at all was in the wet, quickly fading footsteps leading toward the swinging doors.

It was hard not to feel a bit like a cliché, clad all in black as he was, standing pale and ominous in the dark of an alleyway, the soft light emanating from her kitchen window only _just_ shy of touching his toes. He could spot the tail-end of a cat digging through her bins and he involuntarily hissed, his tongue peeking only briefly from between his sharp, white teeth. Fur on end, tail struck firmly up into the air it leapt from the top of the garbage can, running scared into the darkness. He hated cats.

When he finally saw the top of her head, face pointed downwards, her features lost in the cloud of steam rising from the sink, he inhaled deeply and his pupils, in all their beady, rat-like similarities, widened in anticipation. He could still smell the warm saltiness of her skin, could _hear_ the blood rushing through her veins like waves crashing against rocks. He was a boat drifting within the ocean of her living, breathing form, and he'd been waiting, rather_patiently_, he thought, to come ashore; to let loose the sacred waters of her life, and _bleed her dry_.

After she had been questioned ad-infinitum about the "harrowing events" (namely, Kohn having followed her to California) which would occur in her driveway not long after her run-in with Chibs Telford at the hospital, Gemma, and Jax, in particular, were quite frankly, _staggered_ at the very _idea_ of her ignoring such obvious signs. And she would have to fight tooth and nail against rolling her eyes, scoffing at their own "obvious" condescension towards her, how resolute they were concerning her apparent lack of situational awareness. As far as they were concerned, she'd been good and well retired in the years she had been away and therefore completely useless where the undead were concerned.

While she most certainly took offense to their complete lack of faith in her abilities (however dormant they had been), she was in truth more offended with _herself_. While the instincts remained, the agile swiftness with which she could still dispatch a blood-bag or two, it was this particular wretch, Kohn, who had her feeling so vulnerable, almost a stranger to herself. A man, a _monster_ who had somehow wheedled his way into her life, seemingly human, digging his way inside of her to a place where all that physical prowess meant nothing if her head was so caught up in the onslaught of her mental deficiencies, she hadn't even been looking in the right place.

In the days, months, _years_ following the terminated pregnancy, there had been an altogether different kind of seed planted within the very core of her. A weakness that hadn't been there before, but would remain throughout the rest of her life, even after the birth of another child, a new life, so different than any of the others she had lived before, and still: it would remain. She could never quite bring herself to regret her decision; after all, the child would have almost certainly been fatherless, perhaps even motherless, given enough time, and as she came full circle within her young life of reckless abandon, she came into a completely unselfish awareness – unlike anything she had ever experienced in her life. While there was a truth, a strength, and an absolute self to her personhood as a woman that she would never feel compelled to change, there was a new facet that shone as red as the positive plus-sign of a cheap pregnancy test. The benevolence of potential motherhood was ignited deep within her, and as such, in all her future endeavors, there was a softness that she had had to hide, deep, deep inside, cradled within her, a fierce protectiveness, which she supposed was how she subconsciously made up for the fact that her first foray into motherhood had been a complete and utter failure.

She supposed that that was how Gemma saw her now, standing straight-backed and silent, resting a good portion of her weight to one side. Although the years had aged Gemma, and there was no doubt that she had _aged_, the fierceness of her youth still shone from behind her eyes and Tara knew it was only a matter of time before she faced the inevitable interrogation concerning her departure 10 years earlier. And if she were honest, she would have preferred another showdown with Kohn, and with no big men on motorbikes to protect her.

* * *

There was a lot of villainous squinting on her part – Gemma's. If it weren't for the traitorous twisting of her guts she would have cracked a brief smirk, if only for her once almost-mother-in-law's flair for the dramatic. She had rehearsed this conversation in her head more than an appropriate number of times; when she should have been studying, cooking dinner, standing exhausted, dazed, in the shower for so long that the water ran cold.

A small part of her had always dreamed of telling Gemma the truth. Her own mother had been disappointing, to say the least, never quite living up to Tara's expectations of what a mother was supposed to be, and so she had, quite unsurprisingly, nudged herself; skinny, pale, nervous, beneath the ragged and torn edges of Gemma's maternal wing. There was a frightening violence in Gemma's motherly tendencies. She fit the description to be sure, the bare minimum of what a mother should be (in Tara's estimation), but there had been times when she had gone a step or two beyond, and Tara had wondered if she wasn't more animal than human, acting on instinct more so than human consciousness.

"You got a lot of nerve coming back here," she began, stern, and without any of the compassion that she had only barely remembered in her many and varied imaginings of this very conversation, "just as selfish as you always were, no surprise there I guess."

The accusation stung, but she was having a hard time denying it, as she had similarly blamed herself for years; selfishly running from the father of her child, killing that child, and beginning a new life as if it had never even existed.

"I know there's no point in my apologizing—"

"You're damn right," she interrupted, raising a bony finger accusingly, jabbing it towards Tara's pounding heart.

"But…" her voice trailed off in indecision and nervousness, and a fierce anger began to grow at the base of her skull. Anger at herself for what she had done, anger for being angry at such a thing, and pure, venomous rage that Gemma Teller had had to go and give birth to her son, who had charmed his way into her life, inciting an animal within herself that she wasn't sure she ever would have found without his help.

Gemma raised in an eyebrow, waiting impatiently for Tara's excuses, her feet shifting loudly against the concrete.

"_Well? _"

She took a breath, let it out slow, the way she had taught herself from a very young age, tucked up in bed, listening to the sounds of her parents' raised voices; her father's thundering footsteps, pausing in front of her door, and the seconds between when he would stop, and when he would finally, _finally_, continue.

"I've been wanting to tell you this for a—"

A scoff; like nails on a chalkboard, like tinfoil being chewed between your teeth; a rolling of the eyes, so hard that it looks nearly painful, exaggerated and dramatic, like a 12 year old girl, being absolutely certain that she knows best and better than you; and the anger that had been building only moments earlier began to seep, quickly, like blood from a punctured artery.

"_Knock it off, Gemma_," she nearly shouted, her hands coming to her hips aggressively, a piece of hair flying loose from the pile atop her head.

She went to interrupt again, as if she couldn't help herself even if she wanted to, a reflex, but Tara spoke again before she could utter even one syllable of self-righteous sound.

"Would you stop acting like a child for just _one minute_, and listen to what I have to say? Could you do that, maybe? _One minute? _"

She looked stunned for a quarter of second, a new and infrequent schooling of her features. After a brief moment she nearly began her own tirade against Tara's outburst, when the unusual sound of tiny, inexperienced feet clumsily running into the room interrupted their near-shouting match. His little voice cried up at Gemma happily, and Tara was so stunned by the sight of a child amongst the bleakness of the room she almost didn't hear him call her "grandma," before she bent at the knees to lift him into her arms, wiping a spot a food away from the corner of his mouth.

"Abel," Gemma said politely, her voice betraying nothing, "this is Tara. She used to be a _friend_ of your Dad's."

He responded with a shy "hello," hiding his face in his grandmother's neck, as if embarrassed, and Tara nearly sobbed out her own "hello," attempting to smile reassuringly but in actuality trying her very best to slow the frantic racing of her heart, and to keep the bile from rising in her throat, scorching her insides and making her voice scratchy and weak.

"We'll talk later," she said softly, grimacing more than smiling, before fleeing the unbearable closeness of the garage.

* * *

In a strange way she had always comforted herself with the notion that she had ultimately saved a life. Even though it was not lived, would it have been one worth suffering for?

Despite the usual warmth of the season, she felt rather cold behind the wheel of the Cutlass. She felt a chill go through her bones and gripped the steering wheel tighter, hearing the soft squeak of the leather as if from a distance. The wind blew noisily outside, trash skittering against the pavement, the branches of the few trees in the vicinity creaking in displeasure.

She tried not to think of his clumsy steps, his small frame, his vulnerability a pulsing beacon to a harsh reality she had attempted to save her _own child_from, seemingly having sacrificed her own sanity in the process. She felt a sudden, cool dampness against the flesh of her cheeks and shuddered, slamming her hands against the guiltless steering wheel; relishing in the pronounced bones of her hands hammering into the hardness of the wheel.

There was a soft tapping against her drivers' side window and she jumped, her nerves running unbearably high. It was Chibs, bent over at the hip, hands cupping his knees so as to meet her surprised gaze. He raised a curious, yet friendly, eyebrow, and she blushed, rolling her window down in embarrassment at realizing there'd been a witness to her near-mental breakdown.

She cleared her throat.

"Hey."

"Everything okay in there?"

He seemed on the verge of laughing, and while she would usually become angry at such a thing, mistaking it for a kind of condescension, she found she could only smile tiredly in return, clasping her hands together in an attempt to quell their violent shaking.

"Yeah, I'm…" she looked thoughtfully down towards her lap and scrubbed her hands roughly over her face, "…no, actually, not really."

"Didn't think so."

She smiled sweetly, "Well, aren't you _observant_."

At the very least she thought it would have scared him off, temperamental female in need of an attitude adjustment, "just let her go home and clean things;" but he only stood from his bent position and let out a deep, full-bodied laugh, and she could see his hands resting at either side of his hips, the tips of his fingers resting against the tops of his pockets.

He bent awkwardly again to meet her gaze, as if only his torso were movable, his legs stubbornly straight, and his hair hung distractedly in front of his eyes.

"How 'bout a drink?"

* * *

_The Wolf's Head_ was basically a dive bar, although it appeared as if it may have been nice once; a very, very long time ago. The floors were wooden and sticky, so that when you lifted your foot to take a step the sole of your shoe found itself stuck for one mildly unpleasant moment. She cringed in disgust and thought briefly of her time as a college freshman.

She watched him prep and light a cigarette over the rim of her beer and snuck a thoughtful glance at the now-healed scars cruelly lining either side of his face. She could still remember the stark whiteness of the bandages all those years ago, how the hastily applied tape had begun to peel away from his sweaty skin in the August heat. After she had boarded the bus, visibly shaken and exhausted, she took a moment to blush at the thought of her re-affirming the bandages to his face without any permission on his part; God knew how he'd received such a brutal injury and she had just gotten right up in his space and _touched him_. Her mind eventually moved on to other things, and she had fallen asleep to the rocking motion of the bus, only remembering their encounter years later, when he had shown up at the hospital.

"Must feel strange bein' back."

She quickly looked away, dreading the idea of being found out, and began picking at the wet label of her beer.

"That's an understatement," she replied, attempting a polite smile.

_Maybe his hair would have been a few shades darker; maybe the planes of his face would have reflected the face of one of her grandparents; maybe he would have inherited her father's flat feet…_

Tara."

She very nearly fell right out of her seat, almost knocking her beer of its axis, only to catch it at the last minute, internally cringing at the feeling of the wet paper sliding from the bottle in a pulpy mess.  
"Who is Abel's mother?"

It was out before she had even considered _not_ discussing it. Initially she had planned on forgetting all about it her encounter with Gemma, going home, drinking herself into a stupor and trying not to think about how _easily_ Abel could have been her son; about how it didn't matter that she had terminated her own pregnancy, there had been a child anyway – and what if her nightmares were still to come?

Chibs took a swig of his beer and flicked a bit of ash from the end of his cigarette onto the dirty glass tray at the center of the table. He looked as if she had finally asked the question he had been waiting for since he had tapped on her car window only an hour earlier.

"A lass named Wendy, went with Jackie a few years back, she's a junkie; don't know where she's at now."

Her guts clenched and she took another swallow of her drink, subtly smacking her lips at the stale taste. Did she even _like_ beer?

* * *

There was a dim awareness of a disc dropping from somewhere near the back of the bar, a lonely echo, and after a brief scratching she heard the soft crooning of a folk song, sad and poignant, and she felt a feeling of melancholy descend upon the room much in the way the record had dropped only moments earlier. She was grateful for the music, even with all its sadness, especially after a silence had fallen between the two of them. It wasn't necessarily what she would have referred to as being "uncomfortable," but she felt her heart _aching_, her head very close to swimming, and she wasn't certain she could trust herself to speak.

The sound of the plucking guitar remained as he watched her trail her fingers through the wet ring left in the wake of her drink, and it seemed as if she were making it a point of not returning his gaze. He studied her hands and remembered, with perfect clarity, the first day he had met her; a seemingly meaningless moment, perhaps only punctuated in a mind so young as hers by the embarrassment that comes with confronting a perfect stranger, but it had always stayed with him as a moment to be remembered; thought about, digested, until he had felt himself nearly sick with it. He attributed this to trauma, largely, seeing as how he had only _just_ stepped off the plane from Ireland, and he had been living in a drug-riddled, whiskey-soaked dream for weeks beforehand, but still, it had been the touch of a caring hand, if only for a few seconds, that had awoken something within him, and the next morning he had woken up, painful and clear, without the familiar, nagging urge for a stiff drink.

Allowing for her moments of avoidance and contemplation, he took a moment to look around the bar. They had been sitting there longer than he had realized, and noticed that they were two of only a few patrons left for the evening. He heard the bartender begin to clean up behind his back, and took a final gulp of his drink, deciding that it was probably time to head home for the evening. When he looked back at Tara, she was looking right at him.

She sighed, awkwardly rubbing one of her arms, "I guess we should probably get going?"

He nodded in agreement, but before she could reach for her keys, he gently grabbed her wrist.

"I'll take ya home," he said gruffly, quickly releasing her upon noticing how close they had become.

"Yeah," she said, clearing her throat nervously, "yeah, sure."

* * *

He relished the darkness of early morning; those quiet, empty hours between midnight and 6 A.M. It was technically tomorrow but it was still _night_, and he hesitantly, almost seductively, touched his tongue to his lips, tasting iron and feeling his stomach _clench_ in anticipation. He had resumed his watch in the same location as the previous evening, hiding out by the bins (and he had to chuckle at this) but with a decent view of her kitchen window. She hadn't been home all night, and although he had initially been intrigued at her absence, he now felt only annoyance; as if she had stood him up, and _hadn't she_?

He clenched his fists in furious disappointment, his nails digging into the skin so hard they nearly drew blood. In dire need of a distraction he began hastily searching for the cat he had frightened away; at the very least he could leave her something to remember him by.

His ears pricked up at the sound of a rumbling engine, all thoughts of the cat forgotten, and melted into the shadows, eyes unerring on the scene unfolding before him. He recognized the insignia sewn on the back of the man's jacket and an excited shiver ran through his veins at the prospect of ridding himself of yet another "vampire hunter," as if these men could even _consider_ themselves predators. They were so clumsy, so _human_; they lacked the finesse and power which came so easily to him, and were mere _children_ in his eyes. He clicked his tongue.

He had known it was _her_ before the helmet had even come off, revealing the familiar planes of her face, but he simply could not let himself believe that she would associate herself with such _scum_. A new plethora of scents mingled with her familiarity; stale beer, cigarette smoke, gasoline – but beneath all of that, entwined with her distinctive qualities, was something entirely new: an alcoholic burn, day-old pen ink, and leather, all smothered in a pervasive masculinity he found repulsive. Kohn watched one of the man's hands hover around her body hesitantly, a mannerism suggestive of a desire to help, to be close; and yet there was a kind of shyness between them, an implication of newness, and he knew that he would have to rid himself (and Tara, clearly) of this preposterous notion immediately.

_He'll never know her like I do_, he thought viciously, his lips quivering. It took all of his strength to keep himself hidden and he let out an inhuman snarl as he saw her hand reach for his as she led him, slowly yet determinedly, away from the bike and towards the inviting glow of the porch light.


	3. Chapter 3

Pt. 3

Charming, CA (2008)

It came as a source of amusement for her that it had taken inviting a stranger into her home in order to realize how much she truly detested the place. Tara had returned to Charming with very little fuss; a passive move into a house and mortgage that she cared little for, and had never truly liked, even as a child. Everything about it was either dreadfully beige or a constant, painful reminder of her tumultuous past. Her current bedroom was no longer the room she had occupied as a teenager, but her parents' old bedroom, and when she and the man standing silently at her back had reached the open doorway, she had laughed apologetically and backed out slowly, shutting the door behind her.

"It's messy," she mumbled, and turned instead towards a closed, vaguely ominous room at the end of the hall.

She had freed herself of her boots and socks when they had arrived, and her bare feet squished pleasantly against the carpet. Her senses had begun to feel heightened, and although she suspected it was because she was a little drunk, it still felt as if she were experiencing the alarmingly clear moments before an accident that you had seen coming. She could hear the gentle sloshing of the liquor inside the glass bottle he had sneakily plucked off the kitchen table, and could very nearly feel the warm glow of the solitary hallway light, which shone especially bright, as the rest of the house was cast in darkness.

The door to her teenage bedroom had not been opened since her return. It had stood, silent and unopened, just _waiting_ for her. And when she would stumble into her parents' old bedroom at night, too tired to even think, she could feel it watching her, as if it were made of prying eyes.

She felt a nudge against her back from the bottle in Chibs' hand, and realized, somewhat embarrassingly, that she had been standing in front of the door for quite a bit longer than she'd realized, and after roughly clearing her throat in an attempt to shake off her somewhat unsettling thoughts, turned the knob.

He stood patiently in the doorway as she delved further, taking in the sad bare walls, the simply-made queen-sized mattress with no frame, two pillows, and one old-looking, pilled duvet. Unlike the rest of the house her old room had hardwood floors, which was one of the only things about the house she had liked. There was an empty closet, a squat, frumpy-looking dresser, and a curtain-less window covered in what appeared to be a film of dust. She glanced back at him expectantly, to which he only raised an eyebrow, and she turned away.

As soon as she cracked open the window a cool breeze blew and disturbed the stillness of the room, like an exhumation. She breathed the air into her lungs and felt her nerves settle. As she took a breath and turned to face Chibs, she found, with only the briefest hint of alarm that he had walked right up to her without her having noticed, and she gently bumped into a remarkably solid chest. In a clumsy turn she came face-to-face with the collar of his shirt, saw the graying hairs of his chest curling upwards, and she felt herself blush. With their renewed closeness, the intensity that she'd felt at the bar returned, and when she lifted her chin to look into his eyes, he brought his lips to hers and she silently thanked him for breaking their gaze before it had even begun.

Since the moment they had left the bar, all she had wanted was to have arrived precisely at this moment; when she wouldn't have to share in an inevitable awkwardness that came with a too close to sober hook-up with a man she barely knew except to have, as a stranger, tenderly grazed the now-scars marring his handsome face, and when she thought about it, how much more intimate could _this_ be?

* * *

He had awoken to the whistling of the briefest hint of a breeze slipping in from the open window, and seen nothing but darkness; the moon must have disappeared behind the clouds. When he moved his arm towards the other side of the bed it was empty, but warm, so he knew that she couldn't have been gone long. In his first moments of wakefulness he felt anxious in the almost perfect silence; not unusual but unnerving, nonetheless, and he moved his legs beneath the sheets so as to hear anything other than his own harsh breathing.

He saw the soft, flickering light of an open flame nearing the doorway, and moments later Tara's bare feet appeared, her toes gripping the carpet. His eyes traveled upwards to find her in little else but a t-shirt, her eyes focusing on the flame of the candle as she cupped her hand around the lighted wick, sheltering it from the wind. The candle itself rested on a small, teacup sized china dish, and she placed it on the small dresser to the right of the bed with a soft "snick" before returning to slip beneath the covers.

The soft light which now emanated throughout the room, as well as her presence, brought him an overwhelming sense of relief, and he shut his eyes against the onslaught of memories which the silence and dark had wrought. They remained quiet for a few moments more, listening to the wind rustling the leaves outside, the flickering and soft popping of the candle, and the rustling of the sheets as they moved slowly to accommodate the presence of another, used to, as they were, sleeping alone.

"I was trying to explain to Gemma why I had left that day," she whispered, lying on her side, closed eyes raised towards the open window as if in supplication.

"But as usual, everything she had to say was far more _important_."

He snorted in appreciation and she turned to face him, finding him on his back with one arm thrown over his eyes.

She stared at him in contemplation, watched his chest rise and fall, studied the scars on his face and wondered, not for the first time, how he had gotten them. She had her suspicions, and she was fairly, if not altogether certain that they had been the result of something otherworldly, but just in the same way she had a secret she had not imparted unto him, so _he_ must have had – and she would do him the same courtesy and keep from prying.

"You look so much older now," he spoke quietly and with a hint of exhaustion.

She scoffed and saw him smile. "Thanks."

"Don't mean it in a bad way."

"I don't see how you could mean it in any other way," she felt herself grinning against her better judgment, "and I don't see how _you're_ one to talk."

He lifted his arm away from his eyes and she immediately grew concerned that she had said the wrong thing, but there was only playfulness there, and she felt herself relax.

He threw his arm back over his eyes, "More experienced," he said, explaining, "you was lookin' pretty scared, first time we met."

_I'm still scared_, she wanted to say, _fucking terrified_.

"You too."

She felt him tense and wanted to take it back; she hadn't meant to say it, but the words had rolled off of her tongue, as if she could still feel the effects of the whiskey rushing around her brain, even though it had been hours and she was almost _too_ sober now.

"I was pregnant," she said quickly, she stared at the side of his face; thought she heard his breathing cease.

"I couldn't keep it." She paused, gnawing her lips nervously; she spoke in a breathless rush. "Not knowing what I knew, and Jax _couldn't_ know,_especially_ not Gemma. You know them; they would have thought it was a miracle."

One big, happy, vampire-hunting family; where nearly everyone you know has been traumatized so badly that they're about as fucked up as most serial murderers. They drink, smoke, ride, fuck, kill and then do it all over again – and what, they were going to make sure they were all home together every night to eat dinner together? Tuck their child into bed read them a bedtime story? _Explain that there are no monsters under the bed?_

"Not you."

She felt the deepness of his voice vibrate within her chest and she unconsciously pressed the palm of her hand against her heart, willing it not to feel _so damn heavy_.

"No," she agreed, "not me."

* * *

The next day was pleasantly warm, with a rare burst of fresh air that served only to helpfully brush stray hairs from the back of your neck when you began to feel too hot. Tara had awoken later than usual, with Chibs' body curled around her own, one of his arms thrown lightly over her waist. The light of late morning seemed to shine almost purposefully against the skin of his arm, and she let her fingers carelessly stray along his weathered skin, sun-drenched and lightly freckled.

They were both slow to rise; his light kisses against her shoulder cause for a brief, yet satisfying distraction, snippets of quiet, contemplative conversation, and the pleasure which arose from ignoring the shrill beeping of their cell phones, lost amongst their piles of clothing kept them perfectly contented with remaining in bed. She was surprised with how decidedly not awkward their morning-after had been, and when, in the late afternoon, they had stood at her front door to say goodbye, and she gave him a curiously and uncharacteristically shy kiss on the cheek, and he had looked at her as if she were something indisputably precious for all of two seconds before attempting a stoic look of nonchalance; she knew that she would be seeing him again.

In retrospect, the rest of the afternoon and evening was suspiciously normal; and she could have kicked herself for being so unusually relaxed and_happy_. At first she had thought that maybe she was getting a headache, a result of too much alcohol and not enough breaks for water, or maybe she was getting sick. But when the pain and fever refused to come, and she continued to find herself taking particular notice of the late afternoon sunlight, remembering a song that she used to like and playing it over and over again through the tiny speakers of her phone, and when she had been washing the dishes and even began _tapping her feet_, well, she couldn't help but blame herself.

She would never admit that she had entirely _forgotten_ about the vampire-stalker situation which had brought her back to California in the first place, but given the events of the last 24 hours or so, the constant worry that she'd felt from the very minute he had revealed himself to her dissipated _just_enough, so that when he _did_ make what was to be his final appearance, she had been caught off guard, and therefore given him an edge that she liked to think he would not have had otherwise.

As the sun set and the sky grew dark, Tara's childhood home sat in an unusually comfortable silence. She had spent the afternoon and early evening cleaning and re-arranging, stripping off old sheets, washing dishes, throwing away those extraneous details which did nothing but weigh her down. Her kitchen was quiet, but for the soft ticking of the hallway clock, and she sat cross-legged in a chair at her kitchen table, laptop open and humming. In the few hours that she had spent tidying up, she had actually started to make plans for what she wanted the house to look like. While the place certainly held its fair share of less than pleasant memories, she came to the conclusion that this was her house now, and she deserved to feel comfortable and safe, to create a surrounding in which to be happy – to maybe even _move on_.

The only warning she had was the shrill, terrified sounds of a cat outside her kitchen window – and then he was _on her_. The chair she had only seconds earlier been seated in, knocked to the floor, with his unbearably heavy weight on top of her, hands clasped around her throat so hard she could already feel the bruises forming; and as his fingers gripped the fragile length of her neck she recalled with horror the fact that after the long, luxurious shower she had taken, had forgotten to put the silver crucifix back around her neck.

"I see you're missing your little _souvenir_," he hissed, his lips and teeth nearly dripping with saliva, the fine points peeking out between the reddened meat of his face. "Souvenir," as if her years spent monster-hunting were simply a mere foray into the unknown – as if she were a _tourist_.

Kohn's twisted, persistent perception of who she was had her mind reeling, and the feelings of surprise and fear suddenly dissipated, and she was left only with the rage she had kept sequestered the last few days. She brought up a knee roughly between his legs and he relinquished his grip against her throat; it was all she needed, rolling and twisting away from him, she scrambled for the hallway.

She could still smell the iron of his breath by the time she had made it to her parents' bedroom, and she had only caught the glint of the crucifix for a moment before she felt his hands on her again, the tops of her arms trapped in his vice-like grip.

"I don't know why you insist on playing this game," he whispered into her ear; his breaths were even and unlabored, and for just a moment she cursed her own mortality, the pounding of her heart that he could almost certainly hear. She could _feel him_; his obvious pleasure at her exertion and she felt sick.

"_Why couldn't you have just killed me? _"

The thought had crossed her mind on more than one occasion. When Kohn had first revealed himself for whom, _what_ he really was, there had been a brief moment, but a moment all the same, where she had silently wondered if him killing her was really all that bad. It certainly would have been preferable to this ridiculous charade.

"It's not as if you actually _love_ me."

The word "love," slid out from between her lips, like a slug caught in the cracks of pavement. The sickening sensation she had only just felt grew, and climbed inside of her, and she almost cracked a hysterical laugh at the idea of vomiting all over him.

"_You_ haven't lived long enough to know what love _truly is_," he replied, hands crawling along the length of her body, his knees pushing against the backs of her legs, walking her towards the bed, "but I can show you."

The way he had been touching her did nothing to betray her own idea of what he planned to "show her," and the idea that she would have been better off dead at this point rang louder than ever within the fogginess of her thoughts.

"No," she rushed out hurriedly, spinning in his arms, planting her hands against his chest pleadingly.

"Please, I want you to," swallowing back the bile which had arisen at the very idea of what she was about to say, "I _want_ you to show me, but, not like this, _please_."

She could tell he was wary in his inclination to believe her, but the desire and the "love," he had been feeling for her in the months since he had laid eyes on her had his skepticism of her become only a fleeting thing, and his gaze, his grip, softened, and he allowed her to lead him, hand in hand, towards the carefully made bed. Despite the pounding of her heart, the cogs of her brain running at a mile a minute in an attempt to figure out what she was going to have to do, she took a moment to thank whatever strange, drunken part of her the night before had led Chibs to her old bedroom instead of this one. The idea of lying with Kohn upon a bed where she had lain with a man she cared about only hours earlier, she may have begun to feel sicker than she already was, a paralyzing sickness.

"I was wondering when you would come around," he purred.

In the darkness of the bedroom it was hard to make out his face, but his teeth nearly glowed, and there was no question about the wet, animal-like salivating at the corners of his mouth. She couldn't make out the rest of him, worse, she could feel him; everywhere, his hands planted on either side of her head, his legs entrapping her own, his chest only mere inches above hers. When his lips went to her neck she imagined his heart. Ancient and lifeless, sitting still inside his chest, as if it were a cavern, she imagined that the insides of him echoed; that the blood he intended to siphon from her veins would drip, loudly, like a rock being tossed inside a well.  
His teeth scraped her flesh and she knew there was no more time for game playing, for keeping him off his guard. This was as vulnerable as he was going to get, and as she moved her arm across the soft, well-worn blanket, she arched her neck, as if in a fit of wantonness.

"_I can smell him all over you_," he hissed, and she froze, felt his fingers grip the pillow beneath her head so tightly she heard the cotton tear, and his fingers moved angrily, steadily lower towards the exposed flesh of her stomach.

The rage returned. In Kohn's physical weaknesses, his masculine desires that she had seen and experienced all her life, she nearly forgot about his otherness; about the fact that he was an anomaly, evidence of a world that human beings had yet to tap, but his maddening desires for her, as any red-blooded human male for a woman, as if she were a piece of meat to be devoured, made her angry. _Furious._ And the smooth wood of the stake in her hand felt warm, as if it had come alive, and with the sound of his zipper being undone, the almost-feeling of _him_ against her, she plunged the pointed, sharp end of it into his chest, disrupting the quiet of his mummified heart. Thick, dark, coagulated blood dripped over her fingers, ran down her wrists and she nearly gasped – almost wanted to feel it run into her mouth, devour him until there was nothing left.

The body landed on the carpet with a thud of finality, and it looked as if his now-desiccated corpse would shatter with the force of the fall. It remained whole, yet he looked emptier than ever, the eyes nearly shrunken to nothing in its sockets, the flesh of its cheeks nearly transparent.

She wanted to stand, to stretch her legs, to rip the clothes from her body and burn them, but her joints felt locked, the knuckles of her fingers hurt with how tight she continued to grip the weapon that had saved her life, and the blood had begun to dry over the skin of her hands, her face, and chest. There were crickets chirping from outside her window, and the wind whistled, shaking the trees.  
Vaguely, in the distance, she heard her front door fly open, heard the doorknob slam into the wall, probably making a large dent she would have to fix.

"Tara!"

As if from a distance, as if she were moving further and further away, disappearing.

* * *

Portland, OR (2010)

She had come to think of it as a season all their own; as if it defined and molded who they had become together. It wasn't as if in the off-season, in the deepest, coldest bouts of winter she ceased to love him, but it was this particular time of year; spring, when they had first encountered the other for the second time, that she couldn't help herself from staring admiringly at his face in the early hours of the morning. Before she left for work, watching him read some or other mammoth novel he had found at a thrift store; re-learning the planes of his face as if she had never seen them before.

"Stop that now."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

His lips quirked upwards and she could just barely see the tell-tale glint in his eyes, his gaze stubbornly focused on the pages in front of him.

She hadn't waited especially long to leave Charming, and he hadn't strayed too long behind her. They had drifted apart for only a few months, she needing, more than ever, a fresh start; and he having too many bar fights borne of frustration and the ceaseless memories that he had thought were finally buried. It was as if, in being with Tara, he had finally allowed himself to cease being haunted by the ghosts of his wife and daughter, that in being happy with someone else, he could finally grieve them properly. But when she left him with a soft kiss, a quiet, "see you later," it felt as if the flesh of his face was no longer the scarred mess he had come to know, but fresh and painful; like he had rubbed salt in the wound.

He had decided that he would no longer accept the placating pats on the back from the men he had come to see as family. It was time let the past stay past.

She liked her new house almost infinitely better than her parents' place in Charming, and almost immediately she felt and took comfort in its smallness; the near over-abundance of old windows that let in a bit of a draft; the tiled kitchen, and the almost overwhelming smile of the pine, hardwood floors. A few rugs were the first order of the day, followed by slightly-used furniture that she could just _sink_ into at the end of a long shift. And she had only just finished the bedroom when Chibs had shown up; just about as shy as she had been the morning of Kohn's attack; their first morning after, and she suddenly knew exactly _why_ he had looked at her the way he did – like she was something to be treasured.

"I was thinking of calling in sick today."

"Seconds from death?"

She slapped him loudly on the arm and he responded exactly as she had anticipated; he continued to read as if she hadn't touched him at all.

"It's first warm day we've had in months. I thought it would be _nice_."

"No need to get all defensive, darlin'."

"You do this on purpose."

He _finally_ closed his book and winked at her; mischievous, charming, and undeniably _irritating_.

"Just because that happened to work the _one time_—"

"Definitely more than that—"

"Okay, _fine_. Can we please just be outside today? The sun? Remember it?"

* * *

The monsters would never be completely gone. They would always be there, lurking in the shadows, persisting in the memories of those who would try to forget them. And there would always be the hunters, the ex-lovers, distant brothers, who would fight them; those who couldn't _let_ themselves forget, made sure that they wouldn't, even if it meant a rather impressive parade of death, with their very own float at its exhaustive conclusion. A solemn celebration punctuated with blood and alcohol; an infinite echo of tires on asphalt.

The sun was at its peak, and only the occasional cloud passed over the sky, blanketing them in a chilly shadow for only the briefest of moments before moving on, reminding them both that however dark and cold, the sun remained. They were on a long stretch of winding road, with no particular destination in mind; a route neither of them had yet to explore, a new stretch of country to breathe and watch together, feel a previously undiscovered piece of earth beneath their feet, find a new bar with floors that were mopped at _least_ semi-regularly.

She was nervous about the days' end. When he would park the bike at the side of the deserted highway and they would watch the sun go down; and maybe the next day would be cold again, winter wouldn't want to be forgotten quite yet, but for now it was warm, and spring was right at its heels, running playfully around its ankles like a small child. In the distance she thought she could see it; a tiny pair of bare feet, tripping over themselves in excitement, tugging on their legs and laughing, and like a cloud passing over the sun, she would be reminded that the shadows are only temporary.


End file.
